Heretofore, manually conducting either dart leagues or tournaments has been very hectic and involves time consuming operations. Charting participating players, writing match cards, computing players' scores, collecting players' scores, and calculating each player's current standing are just a few of the major areas for problems and mistakes associated with operating a dart league or tournament. The added factor of human error can increase the severity of these problems even more.
In tournaments, charting participating players is prone to errors, not because the charting is complicated and hard to follow, but because of the rush and confusion surrounding the charting process. Players typically must manually fill out a registration chart. This requires players to manually write his or her name into small spaces and locate opposing teams. The occurrence of human error is very likely in this situation due to players being rushed, several people working on one chart, difficulty in reading handwriting on cards and charts, and questions being asked during charting by officials and players.
During league play, players must accurately keep track of each others score while also concentrating on their own league performance. Players typically compute each others score and keep track of these scores on a nearby chalkboard or the like. Such a technique is unorganized, confusing and prone to human error.
After the completion of a match, each player's score must be reported, assimilated with the scores of other players, and then computed to determine the present standing of each player in the league. The collection, computation, and distribution of this statistical data typically requires a large amount of time and effort by many people. Routemen must travel to all the remote locations and collect the statistical data, then people located at a central office must calculate the current results of the league standings from the statistical data. After the current results of the league standings have been calculated, this information must be distributed to each remote location. This whole process requires a great deal of time and is very expensive.
Contemporary computerized dart games may help to reduce some of the problems associated with league or tournament play. Computerized target games are well-known as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,618 to Tillery et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,824,121 to Beall et al. Such electronic games automatically compute and display players' scores. Tillery et al. discloses a self-scoring electronic target game with a video display for providing instructions and various game conditions. Beall et al. discloses a dart game with a video display that can be programmed to present a customized display according the desires of the owner or lessee of the dart game.
While computerized dart games may help with the scoring problems associated with tournament play, these games still fail to solve many of the other problems associated with large leagues or tournaments.